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Tourism: KeysFin analysis: in Romania, over 400 tourism agencies closed down in 2016 and 2017
Some hundreds of agencies and tour operators closed down in the last five years and the tourists can find themselves without money and holidays as the solution of setting up a special fund for such situations has been left at the level of a proposal, a KeysFin analysis shows. Even so, the summer season 2018 seems to be the best of the last years, but beyond the large number of tourists, the crowds at the seaside, the increase of the quality of the hotel services, the Romanian tourism has a lot of challenges.
According to a KeysFin analysis, 408 tourism agencies and tour operators closed down in2016 and 2017and the recent case of the Terra Tourism is the first warning signal of this year.
‘Most companies which closed down had a high financial vulnerability. In most cases, the business plans did not take into account the reality of the market, the dynamics of collections and the payment duties. Thus,by overestimating the business,many got into a financial blockage’explained the analysts from KeysFin.
However, as a whole, the Romanian tourism is on a positive trend. The profitability of the sector is estimated to get this year at over 200 million lei, a double level against seven years ago, the analysts from KeysFin say. Some of the expenses evolved significantly,such as the expenses with the personnel which grew by approximately50% over the last five years,but this growth was positively reflected in the net result,which advanced from21.3 million lei in 2012 to 163.2 million lei, the estimated value for 2017.
The KeysFin analysis shows that the most profitable company was Charter Broker SRL which reported a net profit of 6.38 million lei, followed by Business Travel TourismSRL (5.68 million lei), Happy Tour SRL (5.61million lei), Touring EuropaBus Romania SRL (4,87 million lei) and Prestige Tours International SRL (4,59 million lei). In the top 10 the most profitable were Travel Time D&R SRL, Christian 76 Tour SRL, Creative Eye SRL, Masiro Travel SRL and Paralela 45 Turism SRL.
World Travel&Tourism Council (WTTC) measures annually the impact of tourism on the economy in 185countries, analysing both the tourism agencies and the tour operators and hotels, air companies, airports, entertainment and recreation services in tourism.
The 2018 report of this organisation places Romania 66th in the world from the point of view of the value of the direct contribution of tourism to the GDP( 3billion dollars) at a large distance from the average of the EU (23.8 billion dollars)or the global average (21.5billion dollars).
Regarding this indicator as share in the GDP the differences disappear significantly by reaching almost half of the average of the EU (3.9%)the global average respectively (3.1%).Although the real growth estimated for2018 of the direct contribution of tourism at the GDP is 4.6% the long-term perspectives (2018 – 2028) are less optimistic, the annual average growth estimated for this indicator being only 2.1% (against the EU average of 2.3% and the global average of 3.8%) thus placing Romania 178th in the world.
The KeysFin study relies on the data reported officially in 2016 by all 3,276 companies registered at the ministry of finances in the sector of tourism agencies. Moreover, the study includes estimates of the specialists KeysFin for the main indicators in 2017, the official data not being wholly available for this year.